


perspective

by a_gay_poster



Category: Naruto
Genre: 5+1 Things, Ensemble Cast, M/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 02:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18273893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_gay_poster/pseuds/a_gay_poster
Summary: Prompt: "Can we see basically a whole bunch of people's reactions to how close Lee and Gaara are?"Five times someone didn't get their relationship quite right, and one time someone did.





	perspective

**Author's Note:**

> There are a couple of OCs in this that you may recognize from my other works. The Suna Council members (and their many quirks) also appear in 'worth fighting for', and Kinoko Kaizawa (Lee's long-suffering downstairs neighbor) makes an appearance in 'Take it Easy (Love Nothing)' and 'The Language of Flowers' series. Hopefully they aren't too intrusive.

**1.**

Tenten stretches out across her bed, her face furrowed into a pout.

“Stop fidgeting,” Neji scolds her. “You’re going to smear your nails. I’m not doing them again if you ruin them before they dry.”

Tenten rolls onto her back, holding her fingers above her head, and fans them in the air to dry them. 

“Sorry,” she says. “I just can’t stop thinking about Lee.”

“What about him?”

“Didn’t you see him at the gate today when the Kazekage left?”

Neji furrows his eyebrows. From upside-down, he looks completely comical. Tenten grins at him.

“I was there,” Neji agrees, cautiously. “Why?”

“I don’t know, he just seemed … down.” Tenten flops back onto her stomach and Neji slaps her elbow to keep her from rubbing her still-tacky fingernails against the comforter.

“Do you think he’s, like … I don’t know, pining?” she says, as Neji leans forward to blow over her nails.

Neji pauses his breaths.

“Lee, pining?” he asks. “For whom?”

“Ugh, for _Gaara_ , I guess!” Tenten grunts. “I mean, you saw it, Neji, he hugged him for, like, an _inappropriately_ long time. I thought the ANBU were gonna drag him away.”

Neji rolls his eyes.

“Lee has never wanted anything in his life without shouting his desires from the rooftops. You remember when he had that crush on Sakura when we were thirteen? He declared his love for her and asked her out in front of every genin in the village!”

Tenten heaves a sigh. 

“You’re right,” she admits. “I just worry about him, you know? What if he has a secret crush and Gaara turns him down and breaks his little heart?”

“He’s an adult, Tenten, I’m sure he’ll survive. He survived Gaara crushing his arm and leg before, he can live through a little rejection.”

Tenten reaches up and scratches her upper lip. She’s immediately confronted with a sticky sensation along her cheek. 

Neji makes a horrified face.

“Sorry,” she blurts. “I didn’t mean to-”

Neji holds his hand out, snapping. 

“Just give me your hand,” he says sharply. “I’ll fix it.”

**2.**

“Ah, Rival, you’re home!” Gai cries, just as Kakashi steps through the door. “I’m making soup!”

 _Oh no,_ Kakashi thinks, but he smiles at Gai from behind his mask. 

“Smells great,” he lies. “Did you see Lee off on his mission this morning?” 

“Indeed!” Gai bangs his fist against the kitchen counter, leaving a dent that Kakashi will no doubt somehow become responsible for fixing in a week or two. “He seemed most eager to be on his way!”

“Is that so,” Kakashi demurs, making his way into the kitchen. The soup is bubbling away merrily, thick and bewilderingly bright orange. He pulls down his mask to distract Gai with his dimples while he fiddles with the stove’s burners. 

Gai frowns, the drama of it creasing his cheeks and jawline.

“What’s wrong?” Kakashi asks him. 

“Something seemed … off,” Gai says, squinting. “Lee is always excited for missions, but- I don’t know. He seemed especially exuberant this time.”

“Wasn’t he going to Suna?” Kakashi says, as he uses sleight of hand to drop the whole pepper pot into the soup.

“Do you think that’s it?” Gai asks. 

Kakashi has tried not to think about what Lee gets up to in Suna at all, although he’s heard murmurings of rumors here and there.

“Eh,” he says, “maybe.”

“I wonder…” Gai begins, then trails off, his scowl deepening. 

“Yes?” Kakashi prods him. He quickly pulls his mask up so Gai can’t see his smirk. Gai sometimes takes a little longer to find the point, but he always gets there eventually. 

“Do you think Lee and the Kazekage…”

“Hmm?” Kakashi hums, feigning disinterest as he slaps a lid onto the pot of soup, hoping to heat it faster.

“... are rivals?”

Kakashi stares at Gai in shock. He blinks rapidly, several times. Perhaps his blind eye is acting up and this is some sort of hallucination.

“I thought Neji was Lee’s rival,” Kakashi says at last.

“That’s true,” Gai says. The furrow between his brows deepens. He wheels to the cupboard and begins rattling around for bowls. The kitchen is quiet for a few moments, save for the clanking of cutlery as Gai sets the table.

“Say, Kakashi,” Gai says, once the spoons have been set out and two glasses of water sit collecting condensation on the tabletop. “Do you think a person can have two rivals?”

Kakashi has to think on it for a moment.

“Do you mean rivals, or _rivals_?”

Gai narrows his eyes in a confused stare, and Kakashi bites his tongue.

“I mean,” Kakashi falters. “I don’t know, Gai. You’re the one who comes up with all the rules about those things.”

Gai smacks his fist into the center of his palm.

“That must be what it is, then!” he bellows. “Ah, the blossoming of a young rivalry! How beautiful! How powerful! Oh, it brings a tear to my eye!” He wipes at his eyes with great panache.

Kakashi hums noncommittally.

“Hey, Gai?”

“Yes, Rival?”

“Your soup is burning.”

Gai rushes over to take the lid off the pot of smoky, peppery black murk with a cry of alarm.

“I’ll order us some take-out, shall I?” Kakashi offers with an innocent smile.

**3.**

Kankuro is in the middle of a painstaking puppet assembly job when someone starts pounding on the door.

The sound startles him. He drops an infinitesimally tiny screw and loses it among the floorboards. He walks to the door cursing and throws it open with his most intimidating and disgruntled expression.

“Hello, Kankuro-kun!” Rock Lee chirps brightly from his doorstep. He stinks like sweat and sand, and his nose is sunburnt; he must have just made it to the village and run straight here. He’s still carrying his dingy rucksack.

Lee stills for a moment, grin fading into a worried grimace.

“Is this a bad time?” he asks cautiously.

“Why are you here, Lee?” Kankuro demands flatly.

Lee looks over Kankuro’s shoulder into the dim entryway of the house, his eyes bright.

“I came to see if Gaara was here!” he beams. 

Kankuro looks over his shoulder, as if Gaara would materialize at the mention of his name. There’s nobody behind him, but Lee is still shifting back and forth eagerly on the doorstep. How he has that much energy after running for three days across the desert, Kankuro can’t fathom.

“Temari?” Kankuro yells into the house. “Is Gaara here?”

“No,” she calls from somewhere upstairs. He hears the heavy tread of her footsteps descending the staircase. “He asked the gate guards to inform him as soon as Lee arrived.”

She tromps into the entranceway wearily.

“Oh,” she says in a small voice, once she sees who’s at the door. “Hello, Lee.”

“Temari-san! It is wonderful to see you!” Lee cries without missing a beat or seeming to notice the odd expression on her face.

“Gaara left just a few minutes ago,” she says sharply. “You must have just missed each other. He was headed towards the West Gate.”

“I will go find him!” Lee yells, saluting to her. He bows to them each in turn. “Thank you very much for your assistance!”

In a flash of dust and green spandex, he vanishes.

Kankuro turns to regard his sister, who is massaging away a headache at her temples.

“That was weird,” he says.

“Was it?” she snaps. “Was it _weird_ , Kankuro?”

“Um, I mean … yeah?” Kankuro says, closing the door quietly. He starts walking back to his workshop - that screw isn’t going to find itself, after all. “I’ve never known Gaara to be into exercise. Little Green Bean’s enthusiasm for taijutsu training must be rubbing off on him.”

“Gaara told you they were taijutsu training?” Temari says, then barks a laugh.

“Mm-hmm,” Kankuro mumbles, as he drops to his hands and knees on the workshop floor. 

When Gaara comes home later that night caked in dirt and bruised all over, Kankuro doesn’t think anything more of it.

**4.**

“The Kazekage is late,” Fuuji of the Southern Flats says, drumming her fan against the Council table impatiently.

“He’s always late,” sighs Kiku from the Western Tribes, with a roll of her eyes. 

Akiro of the Sand Boulder raises his massive head from where it had been nodding on his shoulders.

“Not this late,” he says, his voice like the thundering of a landslide down a mountain pass. 

“It’s been like this all week,” Mataru of the Shield Mesa interjects.

“What makes this week so different from any other?” Kiku retorts. She shakes the long sleeves of her robes out over the table, loosing several kunai, a quill, and a scroll. She unfurls the scroll and raises her eyebrow at the gathered Council members. 

“That Leaf Ninja is in the village this week, I hear,” Masaki the Mountain Shrike cackles, a wry grin twisting her lips. “The one with the eyebrows and the bowlcut. Seems he and the Kazekage have been _very_ close, recently.”

“Which one?” Akiro rumbles. “There are two.”

“The younger,” Masaki clarifies.

“The one the Kazekage failed to kill?” Hosoichi of the Creosote Clan says seriously.

Tamagi of the Lightning Fist draws in a sharp gasp. The remainder of the Council turned to look at her.

“You don’t think- “ she starts, then dissolves into coughing.

Fuuji looks at her over the rim of her glasses.

“I thought the same,” she says.

“Revenge?” asks Hosoichi. 

“Indeed,” Fuuji confirms.

“Perhaps we should draft a proposal,” Kiku says grandly, gesturing with her quill and beginning to scrawl. “Limiting the duration of stay for foreign shinobi within our borders.”

“Most wise-” Mataru begins, just as a change in the tenor of old Juuro’s snoring alerts them to the entry of a twelfth party into the room. 

The Council all turn as one to regard the Kazekage, his still figure filling the entrance to the Council chambers. His pale eyes drift over each of them in turn, flat and expressionless.

“A proposal?” the Kazekage says, his voice quiet and deadly. “Let me see it.” He extends one hand, his posture brooking no argument. 

Kiku’s scroll is passed from wrinkled hand to wrinkled hand until, finally, it makes its way into Gaara’s. 

“Now, Kazekage-sama, this is just a draft-” Kiku begins. 

He scans the page for a bare instant, then crushes it in a ball of sand.

“Motion denied,” he says, then assumes his seat at the far side of the table. “Now, shall we begin our meeting?”

**5.**

Kaizawa Kinoko has seen (and heard) a great many things in her time. 

As a civilian married to a shinobi husband, she is no stranger to the more unusual proclivities of the village’s elite fighting forces. She has survived two Shinobi World Wars, three pregnancies, two childbirths, one near-fatal injury to her husband’s kidneys, and (perhaps most significantly) eight years of living as Rock Lee’s downstairs neighbor. 

But the past week has almost pushed her to her limit. 

It started with the announcement of the Five Kage summit, to be held in Konoha. She mentioned the announcement in passing to Lee at the mailbox, then had to cover her eyes as he smiled at her in that way that made his teeth catch the light (nearly blinding her) and dodge a hastily extended thumbs-up (which she almost caught to the chest).

“I was made aware last week!” Lee had said, to Kinoko’s bewilderment. The event’s schedule had just been made public that morning. 

She even checked with her husband, Toro, later that evening, in case it was something that shinobi were made privy to before the villagers, but he confirmed the jounin and chunin squads had only received the announcement that same day.

Then came the hawks. A _lot_ of hawks. Sometimes multiple per day, flying to Lee’s window and tapping on the glass. 

She wouldn’t have minded them, assuming Lee was receiving some kind of important, mission-related correspondence, but they kept shitting on her begonias. 

After the hawks came the Kazekage himself. 

He was obviously trying to be discreet, teleporting himself up to Lee’s balcony from the alleyway outside, but Kinoko’s daughter Momo happened to be obsessed with cloud-watching recently and had shrieked, “Mommy, there’s a flying man!” just as a rush of sand had bypassed their balcony and deposited the man on Lee’s. 

Kinoko did her best to hush her, but that had ended in a several hours-long tantrum over why Momo wasn’t permitted to throw her brother out the window and “make him fly too”. 

And now, the thumping. It had been going on for _hours_ , by Kinoko’s count. 

Kinoko was no stranger to odd noises from Lee’s apartment, either, and in fact had a separate broom in her living room specifically for banging on the ceiling on the days when his noisiness was at its most exuberant and inappropriately timed, but this? This was beyond the pale even for Lee. 

The thumping had started out faint, spaced out, not all that different from the many times per day that Lee dropped dumbbells, or did jumping jacks, or inexplicably decided he needed to rearrange his furniture. Then it became more frequent, and louder. Then it had migrated throughout the apartment - starting in the kitchen area, then moving to the living room, then to the bedroom and bathroom. At around the same time as the sound had reached a frenetic pace, Kinoko had developed a throbbing headache behind her left eye. Now it’s pulsing in time with the thumps. 

She has already tried banging on the ceiling, multiple times, to no avail. 

There is only one conclusion she can draw.

They have to be sparring up there. 

“Watch your brother,” Kinoko cautions her daughter, and then she takes to the stairs.

She hammers on Lee’s door in time with the repetitive noise, which now seems to be coming from somewhere near the far wall of the genkan. 

The thumping slows, then stops. There’s rustling behind the door. 

“Who is it?” Lee calls through the closed door.

“Kaizawa Kinoko, from downstairs,” she replies, pressing her eye up to the peephole. 

Lee pulls the door open, straightening his vest and jumpsuit as he does so. Behind him, she can see the Kazekage finger-combing his hair back into order. 

“Kinoko-san,” Lee says cordially, “I am so sorry to have disturbed you.”

“You didn’t hear me banging on the ceiling?” she says, cold fury tinging her voice.

“I’m afraid I was a bit distracted,” Lee admits, hand covering up to cover the back of his neck. His face is very red from the exertion, and he reeks of sweat. “We will do our best to be quieter.”

“You know,” she says, “there’s a whole set of training fields by the west gate if you insist on doing that.”

“T-training fields?” Lee gulps.

“I know you know where they are,” she says. “Try using them sometime!”

With that, she spins on her heel and storms down the steps to her apartment.

She doesn’t hear any more thumping after that.

**(6.)**

Gaara and Naruto sit side-by-side in a dingy izakaya on the edge of Konoha. Naruto is on his fourth beer, and just starting to feel it, judging from the flush on his neck and forehead. 

“So,” he slurs, tilting off his barstool and leaning against Gaara’s shoulder. “I got you a present.”

Gaara stares at him, his first cup of sake now half-warm and half-empty clutched in his hand. He raises a brow but, as is his custom, says nothing. 

“Don’tcha wanna know what it is?” Naruto elbows Gaara in the upper arm. The sand slaps his arm down. 

“Tetchy tonight, aren’t you?” Naruto whines. “You that tore up about ending your vacation tomorrow?”

“A Kage Summit is far from a vacation,” Gaara says in his low voice, a rasp barely audible above the clanging music playing over the izakaya’s tinny speakers. 

“Sure, sure, but admit it!” Naruto cries, spreading his arms wide and then slapping them to his own chest. “You’re gonna miss me.” He winks cheesily. 

Gaara looks down into his cup, then hastily downs the remainder of his drink.

“Whoa, slow down there, bud!” Naruto yelps, arms wheeling and barely keeping his balance. “Keep it up and you won’t be able to use my present!” 

“I’m going to miss being in Konoha,” Gaara says, grimacing with the taste of warm sake and his own admission.

“Called it!” Naruto crows. “Now you have to buy me my next drink!”

“You don’t need any more drinks,” Gaara says, his pale eyes cutting into Naruto’s.

Naruto slaps the bar.

“Barkeep, one more round for me an’ the Kazekage here!” He turns to regard Gaara. “Keep bein’ stingy and you won’t get your present.”

“Maybe I don’t want your ‘present’,” Gaara says, a smirk breaking onto his face. “What is it, anyway?”

“You’re definitely gonna want it!” Naruto exclaims, rooting around in the breast pocket of his jacket with his artificial hand. With a flourish, he pulls out a strip of foil packets which unroll themselves over the surface of the bar. 

Gaara recognizes them immediately.

Condoms. 

Gaara does a poor job concealing his blush as the bartender approaches with their drinks, purposefully avoiding eye contact as he hands one to each Kage. 

“Where did you get those?” Gaara asks.

“Aww, man, funny story,” Naruto begins. Naruto thinks all of his stories are funny. Very few of them actually are. “So, I was scheduled to give a talk at the Academy, right? An’ I show up, and all the kiddos _totally ignore_ me, like, what the heck? I’m s’posed to be the big name in town, now! It’s like kids these days don’t even respect their Hokage, y’know?” 

Naruto’s words are becoming more and more unintelligible the further he barrels into his speech.

“Anyway, so come to find out, they accidentally scheduled me on the same day as their sex ed talk! Talk about awkward! I mean, you remember how crazy that day was, right? Or, well-” Naruto pauses. “I guess you don’t, ‘cause you didn’t go to Academy.”

“I did not,” Gaara confirms, gesturing for him to continue.

“Well, y’know, the medi-nin who was teachin’ it felt real bad about messin’ up my schedule an’ all, but the kids _definitely_ wanted to hear from her _way_ more than they wanted to hear from the ol’ Hokage, y’know? I mean, I’m a hero an’ all, but birds and the bees is pretty much all those kids think about at that age.”

“Indeed,” Gaara affirms. His own thoughts at ‘that age’ had been largely consumed with torture and murder, but he is familiar with the concept from Suna’s Academy students.

“Anyway, the medi-nin lady ended up foisting a bunch of her, uh, ‘supplies’ on me on my way out the door, I guess it was the least she could do to apologize or whatever.” Naruto folds up the strip of condoms and passes them over to Gaara, who accepts them and tucks them into his pocket. 

“But I don’t really have any use for ‘em, y’know me an’ Hina are tryin’a get pregnant again,” Naruto boasts.

“I’m quite certain only one person in that equation is capable of falling pregnant,” Gaara says flatly.

“Wow, jerk! It’s supposed to be a beautiful shared moment for us as a couple! I got sympathy pains, y’know, when she was pregnant with Boruto!” 

Gaara refrains from rolling his eyes, but only because the bartender is definitely watching Naruto’s incredibly dramatic display. 

Naruto continues on without noticing Gaara’s disdain anyway, so he might as well not have bothered with the gesture.

“So, I’m passin’ ‘em off to you! Heard you an’ Bushy Brows have been _awful_ close lately, so I figure you can get more use out of ‘em than I can!” Naruto winks obnoxiously and makes a thumbs-up gesture that is somehow simultaneously lewd and brimming with genuine enthusiasm. 

“Thank you,” Gaara says sincerely. “These will come in handy.”

Naruto’s jaw drops open.

“Wha- I- huh?!” he shouts. “Are you serious?”

Gaara nods his affirmation. “This was thoughtful of you.”

“G- wh- you an’- I- I- I was joking!” Naruto cries.

“I wasn’t,” Gaara says, then goes to stand. “I have to get home to Lee, now.”

“What!” Naruto yells, jumping to his feet. His beer tips over and spills across the bar. “You never said- how long?!”

Gaara looks upward, thinking. 

“About a year and a half,” he says, “give or take.” He drops a few coins on the bar, enough to cover his own two cups of sake. “Have a good night, Naruto, and thank you again for the gift.” He stares Naruto directly in the eye. “I’ll be sure to put them to good use.”

“I thought those were just rumors!” Naruto cries after Gaara’s retreating back, the fabric curtain of the bar brushed aside as he vanishes into the night.

“You gonna pay for all this?” the bartender asks.


End file.
